One Thousand and One Nights

by Richard Burton

  (Pilgrimage i. 77.)

  302 So the Hindus speak of “the defilement of separation” as if it were an impurity.

  303 Lane (i. 605) gives a long and instructive note on these public royal-banquets which were expected from the lieges by Moslem subjects. The hanging-penalty is, perhaps, a tattle exaggerated; but we find the same excess in the priestly Gesta Romanorum.

  304 Had he eaten it he would have become her guest. Amongst the older Badawin it was sufficient to spit upon a man (in entreaty) to claim his protection: so the horse-thieves when caught were placed in a hole in the ground covered over with matting to prevent this happening. Similarly Saladin (Salбh al-Din) the chivalrous would not order a cup of water for the robber, Reynald de Chвtillon, before putting him to death

  305 Arab. “Kishk” properly “Kashk”=wheat-meal-coarsely ground and eaten with milk or broth. It is de rigueur with the Egyptian Copts on the “Friday of Sorrow” (Good Friday): and Lane gives the recipe for making it (M. E. chaps. xxvi.)

  306 In those days distinctive of Moslems.

  307 The euphemism has before been noticed: the Moslem reader would not like to pronounce the words “I am a Nazarene.” The same formula occurs a little lower down to save the reciter or reader from saying “Be my wife divorced,” etc.

  308 Arab, “Hбjj,” a favourite Egyptianism. We are wrong to write Hajji which an Eastern would pronounce Hбj-jн.

  309 This is Cairene “chaff.”

  310 Whose shell fits very tight.

  311 His hand was like a raven’s because he ate with thumb and two fingers and it came up with the rice about it like a camel’s hoof in dirty ground. This refers to the proverb (Burckhardt, 756), “He comes down a crow-claw (small) and comes up a camel-hoof (huge and round).”

  312 Easterns have a superstitious belief in the powers of food: I knew a learned man who never sat down to eat without a ceremonious salam to his meat.

  313 Lane (ii. 464), uses the vile Turkish corruption “Rustum,” which, like its fellow “Rustem,” would make a Persian shudder.

  314 Arab. “Darrij” i.e. let them slide (Americanicи).

  315 This tetrastich has occurred before: so I quote Mr. Payne (in loco).

  316 Shaykh of Al-Butnah and Jбbiyah, therefore a Syrian of the Hauran near Damascus and grandson to Isъ (Esau). Arab mystics (unlike the vulgar who see only his patience) recognise that inflexible integrity which refuses to utter “words of wind” and which would not, against his conscience, confess to wrong-doing merely to pacify the Lord who was stronger than himself. The Classics taught this noble lesson in the case of Prometheus versus Zeus. Many articles are called after Job e.g. Ra’arб’ Ayyub or Ghubayrб (inula Arabica and undulata), a creeper with which he rubbed himself and got well: the Copts do the same on “Job’s Wednesday,” i.e. that before Whit Sunday O.S. Job’s father is a nickname of the camel, etc. etc.

  317 Lane (in loco) renders “I am of their number.” But “fн al-siyбk” means popularly “(driven) to the point of death.”

  318 Lit. = “pathway, road”; hence the bridge well known as “finer than a hair and sharper than a sword,” over which all (except Khadijah and a chosen few) must pass on the Day of Doom; a Persian apparatus bodily annexed by Al-Islam. The old Guebres called it Puli Chinбvar or Chinбvad and the Jews borrowed it from them as they did all their fancies of a future life against which Moses had so gallantly fought. It is said that a bridge over the grisly “brook Kedron” was called Sirбt (the road) and hence the idea, as that of hell-fire from Ge-Hinnom (Gehenna) where children were passed through the fire to Moloch. A doubtful Hadis says, “The Prophet declared Al-Sirбt to be the name of a bridge over hell- fire, dividing Hell from Paradise” (p, 122, Reynold’s trans. of Al-Siyuti’s Traditions, etc.). In Koran i. 5, “Sirat” is simply a path, from sarata, he swallowed, even as the way devours (makes a lakam or mouthful of) those who travel it. The word was orig. written with Sнn but changed for easier articulation to Sбd, one of the four Hurъf al-Mutabbakбt, “the flattened,” formed by the broadened tongue in contact with the palate. This Sad also by the figure Ishmбm (=conversion) turns slightly to a Zб, the intermediate between Sin and Sad.

  319 The rule in Turkey where catamites rise to the highest rank: C’est un homme de bonne famille (said a Turkish officer in Egypt) il a йtй achetй. Hence “Alfi” (one who costs a thousand) is a well-known cognomen. The Pasha of the Syrian caravan, with which I travelled’ had been the slave of a slave and he was not a solitary instance. (Pilgrimage i. 90.)

  320 The device of the banquet is dainty enough for any old Italian novella; all that now comes is pure Egyptian polissonnerie speaking to the gallery and being answered by roars of laughter.

  321 i.e. “art thou ceremonially pure and therefore fit for handling by a great man like myself?”

  322 In past days before Egypt was “frankified” many overlanders used to wash away the traces of travel by a Turkish bath which mostly ended in the appearance of a rump wriggling little lad who offered to shampoo them. Many accepted his offices without dreaming of his usual-use or misuse.

  323 Arab. “Imбm.” This is (to a Moslem) a most offensive comparison between prayer and car. cop.

  324 Arab. “Fi zaman-hi,” alluding to a peculiarity highly prized by Egyptians; the use of the constrictor vaginж muscles, the sphincter for which Abyssinian women are famous. The “Kabbбzah” ( = holder), as she is called, can sit astraddle upon a man and can provoke the venereal-orgasm, not by wriggling and moving but by tightening and loosing the male member with the muscles of her privities, milking it as it were. Consequently the cassenoisette costs treble the money of other concubines. (Arranga-Ranga, .)

  325 The little eunuchs had evidently studied the Harem.

  326 Lane (ii. 494) relates from Al-Makrizi, that when Khamбrawayh, Governor of Egypt (ninth century), suffered from insomnia, his physician ordered a pool of quicksilver 50 by 50 cubits, to be laid out in front of his palace, now the Rumaylah square. “At the corners of the pool were silver pegs, to which were attached by silver rings strong bands of silk, and a bed of skins, inflated with air, being thrown upon the pool and secured by the bands remained in a continual-state of agreeable vacillation.” We are not told that the Prince was thereby salivated like the late Colonel Sykes when boiling his mercury for thermometric experiments,

  327 The name seems now unknown. “Al-Khahн’a” is somewhat stronger than “Wag,” meaning at least a “wicked wit.” Properly it is the Span. “perdido,” a youth cast off (Khala’) by his friends; though not so strong a term as “Harfъsh”=a blackguard.

  328 Arab. “Farsakh”=parasang.

  329 Arab. “Nahбs asfar”=yellow copper, brass as opposed to Nahбs ahmar=copper The reader who cares to study the subject will find much about it in my “Book of The Sword,” chaps. iv.

  330 Lane (ii. 479) translates one stanza of this mukhammas (pentastich) and speaks of “five more,” which would make six.

  331 A servile name. Delicacy, Elegance.

  332 These verses have occurred twice (Night ix. etc.): so I give Lane’s version (ii. 482).

  333 A Badawi tribe to which belonged the generous Ma’an bin

  Za’idab, often mentioned The Nights.

  334 Wealthy harems, I have said, are hot-beds of Sapphism and Tribadism. Every woman past her first youth has a girl whom she calls her “Myrtle” (in Damascus). At Agbome, capital-of Dahome, I found that a troop of women was kept for the use of the “Amazons” (Mission to Gelele, ii. 73). Amongst the wild Arabs, who ignore Socratic and Sapphic perversions, the lover is always more jealous of his beloved’s girl-friends than of men rivals. In England we content ourselves with saying that women corrupt women more than men do.

  335 The Hebrew Pentateuch; Roll of the Law.

  336 I need hardly notice the brass trays, platters and table-covers with inscriptions which are familiar to every reader: those made in the East for foreign markets mostly carry imitation inscriptions lest in
fidel eyes fall upon Holy Writ.

  337 These six distichs are in Night xiii. I borrow Torrens () to show his peculiar treatment of spinning out 12 lines to 38.

  338 Arab. “Musбmirah”=chatting at night. Easterns are inordinately fond of the practice and the wild Arabs often sit up till dawn, talking over the affairs of the tribe, indeed a Shaykh is expected to do so. “Early to bed and early to rise” is a civilised, not a savage or a barbarous saying. Samнr is a companion in night talk; Rafнk of the road; Rahнb in riding horse or camel, Kб’id in sitting, Sharнb and Rafнs at drink, and Nadнm at table: Ahнd is an ally. and Sharнk a partner all on the model of “Fa’нl.”

  339 In both lover and beloved the excess of love gave them this clairvoyance.

  340 The prayer will be granted for the excess (not the purity) of her love.

  341 This wailing over the Past is one of the common-places of Badawi poetry. The traveller cannot fail, I repeat, to notice the chronic melancholy of peoples dwelling under the brightest skies.

  342 Moons=Budъr

  343 in Paradise as a martyr.

  344 i.e. to intercede for me in Heaven; as if the young woman were the prophet.

  345 The comparison is admirable as the two letters are written. It occurs in Al-Hariri (Ass. of Ramlah).

  “So I embraced him close as Lбm cleaves to Alif:”

  And again;

  “She laid aside reluctance and I embraced her close

  As if I were Lam and my love Alif.”

  The Lomad Olaph in Syriac is similarly colligated.

  346 Here is a double entendre “and the infirm letters (viz. a, w and y) not subject to accidence, left him.” The three make up the root “Awi”=pitying, condoling.

  347 Showing that consummation had taken place. It was a sign of good breeding to avoid all “indecent hurry” when going to bed. In some Moslem countries the bridegroom does not consummate the marriage for seven nights; out of respect for (1) father (2) mother (3) brother and so forth. If he hurry matters he will be hooted as an “impatient man” and the wise will quote, “Man is created of precipitation” (Koran chaps. xxi. 38), meaning hasty and inconsiderate. I remark with pleasure that the whole of this tale is told with commendable delicacy. O si sic omnia!

  348 Pers. “Nauroz”(=nau roz, new day):here used in the Arab. plur.’Nawбriz, as it lasted six days. There are only four: universal-festivals; the solstices and the equinoxes; and every successive religion takes them from the sun and perverts them to its own private purposes. Lane (ii. 496) derives the venerable Nauroz whose birth is hid in the outer glooms of antiquity from the “Jewish Passover”(!)

  349 Again the “babes” of the eyes.

  350 i.e. whose glance is as the light of the glowing braise or (embers). The Arab. “Mikbбs”=pan or pot full of small charcoal, is an article well known in Italy and Southern Europe. The word is apparently used here because it rhymes with “Anfбs” (souls, spirits).

  351 i.e. martyrdom; a Koranic term “fi sabнli ‘llahi” = on the way of Allah

  352 These rhymes in -y, -ee and -ie are purposely affected, to imitate the cadence of the Arabic.

  353 Arab. “Sujъd,” the ceremonial-prostration, touching the ground with the forehead So in the Old Testament “he bowed (or fell down) and worshipped” (Gen. xxiv., 26 Mat. ii., 11), of which our translation gives a wrong idea.

  354 A girl is called “Alfiyyah “ = A-shaped.

  355 i.e. the medial-form of m.

  356 i.e. the inverted n.

  357 It may also mean a “Sevignй of pearls.”

  358 Koran xxvii. 12. This was one of the nine “signs” to wicked “Pharaoh.” The “hand of Moses” is a symbol of power and ability (Koran vii. 105). The whiteness was supernatural-beauty, not leprosy of the Jews (Exod. iv. 6); but brilliancy, after being born red or black: according to some commentators, Moses was a negro.

  359 Koran iii. 103; the other faces become black. This explains I have noticed the use of the phrases in blessing and cursing.

  360 Here we have the naked legend of the negro’s origin, one of those nursery tales in which the ignorant of Christendom still believe But the deduction from the fable and the testimony to the negro’s lack of intelligence, though unpleasant to our ignorant negrophils, are factual-and satisfactory.

  361 Koran, xcii. 1, 2: an oath of Allah to reward and punish with Heaven and Hell.

  362 Alluding to the “black drop” in the heart: it was taken from Mohammed’s by the Archangel Gabriel. The fable seems to have arisen from the verse ‘ Have we not opened thy breast?” (Koran, chaps. xciv. 1). The popular tale is that Halнmah, the Badawi nurse of Mohammed, of the Banu Sa’ad tribe, once saw her son, also a child, running towards her and asked him what was the matter. He answered, ‘My little brother was seized by two men in white who stretched him on the ground and opened his bellyl” For a full account and deductions see the Rev. Mr. Badger’s article, “Muhammed” () in vol. in. “Dictionary of Christian Biography.”

  363 Arab. “Sumr,” lit. brown (as it is afterwards used), but politely applied to a negro: “Yб Abu Sumrah!” O father of brownness.

  364 Arab. ‘Lumб”=dark hue of the inner lips admired by the Arabs and to us suggesting most umpleasant ideas. Mr. Chenery renders it “dark red,’ and “ruddy” altogether missing the idea.

  365 Arab. “Saudб,” feminine of aswad (black), and meaning black bile (melancholia) as opposed to leucocholia,

  366 i.e. the Magians, Sabians, Zoroastrians.

  367 The “Unguinum fulgor” of the Latins who did not forget to celebrate the shining of the nails although they did not Henna them like Easterns. Some, however, have suggested that alludes to colouring matter.

  368 Women with white skins are supposed to be heating and unwholesome: hence the Hindu Rajahs slept with dark girls in the hot season.

  369 Moslems sensibly have a cold as well as a hot Hell, the former called Zamharir (lit. “intense cold”)or AI-Barahъt, after a well in Hazramaut; as Gehenna (Arab. “Jahannam”) from the furnace-like ravine East of Jerusalem (Night cccxxv.). The icy Hell is necessary in terrorem for peoples who inhabit cold regions and who in a hot Hell only look forward to an eternity of “coals and candles” gratis. The sensible missionaries preached it in Iceland till foolishly forbidden by Papal-Bull.

  370 Koran ii. 26; speaking of Abraham when he entertained the angels unawares.

  371 Arab. “Rakb,” usually applied to a fast-going caravan of dromedary riders (Pilgrimage ii. 329). The “Cafilah” is Arab.: “Caravan” is a corruption of the Pers. “Karwбn.”

  372 A popular saying. It is interesting to contrast this dispute between fat and thin with the Shakespearean humour of Falstaff and Prince Henry.

  373 Arab. “Dalak” vulg. Hajar al-Hammam (Hammam-stone). The comparison is very apt: the rasps are of baked clay artificially roughened (see illustrations in Lane M. E. chaps. xvi.). The rope is called “Masad,” a bristling line of palm-fibre like the coir now familiarly known in England.

  374 Although the Arab’s ideal-of beauty, as has been seen and said, corresponds with ours the Egyptians (Modern) the Maroccans and other negrofied races like “walking tun-butts” as Clapperton called his amorous widow.

  375 Arab. “Khayzar” or “Khayzarбn” the rattan-palm. Those who have seen this most graceful “palmijuncus” in its native forest will recognize the neatness of the simile.

  376 This is the popular idea of a bushy “veil of nature” in women: it is always removed by depilatories and vellication. When Bilkis Queen of Sheba discovered her legs by lifting her robe (Koran xxvii.), Solomon was minded to marry her, but would not do so till the devils had by a depilatory removed the hair. The popular preparation (called Nъrah) consists of quicklime 7 parts, and Zirnнk or orpiment, 3 parts: it is applied in the Hammam to a perspiring skin, and it must be washed off immediately the hair is loosened or it burns and discolours. The rest of the body-pile (Sha’arat opp. to Sha’ar=hair) is eradicated by applying a mix
ture of boiled honey with turpentine or other gum, and rolling it with the hand till the hair comes off. Men I have said remove the pubes by shaving, and pluck the hair of the arm-pits, one of the vestiges of pre-Adamite man. A good depilatory is still a desideratum, the best perfumers of London and Paris have none which they can recommend. The reason is plain: the hair bulb can be eradicated only by destroying the skin.

  377 Koran, ii. 64: referring to the heifer which the Jews were ordered to sacrifice,

  378 Arab. “kallб,” a Koranic term possibly from Kull (all) and lб (not) =prorsus non-altogether not!

  379 “Habбb” or “Habб,” the fine particles of dust, which we call motes. The Cossid (Arab. “Kбsid”) is the Anglo-Indian term for a running courier (mostly under Government), the Persian “Shбtir” and the Guebre Rбvand.

  380 Arab. “Sambari” a very long thin lance so called after Samhar, the maker, or the place of making. See vol. ii. . It is supposed to cast, when planted in the ground, a longer shadow in proportion to its height, than any other thing of the kind.

  381 Arab. “Sulбfah ;” properly prisane which flows from the grapes before pressure. The plur. “Sawбlif” also means tresses of hair and past events: thus there is a “triple entendre.” And again “he” is used for “she.”

  382 There is a pun in the last line, “Khбlun (a mole) khallauni” (rid me), etc.

  383 Of old Fustбt, afterwards part of Southern Cairo, a proverbially miserable quarter hence the saying, “They quoted Misr to Kбhirah (Cairo), whereon Bab al-Luk rose with its grass,” in derision of nobodies who push themselves forward. Burckhardt, Prov. 276.

  384 Its fruits are the heads of devils; a true Dantesque fancy. Koran, chaps. xvii. 62, “the tree cursed in the Koran” and in chaps. xxxvii., 60, “is this better entertainment, or the tree of Al-Zakkъm?” Commentators say that it is a thorn bearing a bitter almond which grows in the Tehamah and was therefore promoted to Hell.

  385 Arab. “Lasm” (lathm) as opposed to Bausah or boseh (a buss) and Kublah (a kiss,

  386 Arab. “Jufъn” (plur. of Jafn) which may mean eyebrows or eyelashes and only the context can determine which. 387 Very characteristic of Egyptian manners is the man who loves six girls equally well, who lends them, as it were, to the Caliph; and who takes back the goods as if in no wise damaged by the loan.